The award includes $25,000, and is considered among the nation’s largest cash prizes for higher education faculty members who exhibit outstanding classroom performance and innovation in undergraduate instruction.

Photo: J Elissa Marshall, Courtesy of The University of Texas at Austin

Mickey is an accomplished costume designer with over 30 years of professional experience in the field. She joined the Department of Theatre and Dance in 2004, and now serves as the senior associate chair and head of the design and technology area. Mickey brings to the classroom a working knowledge of the discipline having designed at most major regional theatres in the country. She has designed costumes for 15 seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and has been an associate artist with the Virginia Stage Company. In addition, she has designed costumes for more than 50 productions over 30 years at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta working there with many of the great directors, designers and playwrights of the American Stage.

In 2010 she won the Joseph Jeff Award for Best Costume Design for her work on the Chicago Shakespeare production of The Madness of George III. She is the winner of the 2010 College of Fine Arts Teaching Award and the 2008 Department of Theatre and Dance Teaching Excellence Award.

“Winning the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award is just the latest in a remarkable string of accomplishments by Professor Mickey,” said Chair Brant Pope. “She combines her internationally recognized design career with a deep and ongoing commitment to the teaching and mentoring of her students.”

Established in 2008, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards program recognizes educators who demonstrate a clear commitment to teaching and sustained ability to deliver excellence to the undergraduate learning experience. A panel of students, peer faculty members and external reviewers evaluates the award nominees’ teaching performance over three years. Faculty members are considered through a rigorous process based on a range of activities and criteria that include expertise, curricula quality, innovative course development and student learning outcomes.